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RIVAL RAILWAY SCHEMES.
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Nam Ting river to the Mekong river watershed."[1] Even more emphatic is another
- ↑ 'Journal of the Royal Geographical Society,' June 1905, p. 618. For the benefit of those who are closely interested in the controversy over the Kung-long Ferry route, I may add that Sir George Scott disagreed with Major Davies as to the exact route to be followed. "The proper route," he declared, "would be to cross southwards from the Nam Ting to the Nam Hsung, down which the Mekong could easily be approached.... If once the railway could be got across the Mekong to Ching-tung, then there is no difficulty whatever in going north towards Tali Fu, or better still, to a point halfway between Tali and Yün-nan Fu, whence there is an easy approach to the Yang-tsze." To this view Major Davies objected. "The line which he proposes," he wrote in the 'Journal of the Royal Geographical Society' for August 1905, is to cross southwards from the Nam Ting to the Nam Hsung. I can only suppose that he means to follow the Nam Ting up to about latitude 23° 45′ or higher, and then bend round southward, passing perhaps near Keng-ma and reaching the Nam Hsung at Möng-Hsung. The range which divides the Nam Ting from the Nam Hsung has nowhere been found as low as 7000 feet. As the Nam Ting valley is here not much over 2000 feet, the difficulties of getting the railway from one valley to the other are likely to be considerable." And further on, "Even if a railway could be got to Ching-tung Ting, the difficulties are by no means over. There is a pass of 6800 feet between the valley of the Black river (in which Ching-tung Ting is situated) and that of the Red river, in which lies Meng-hua Ting, and another pass of 8800 feet between the Meng-hua Ting plain and the Tali Fu plain. Another line from Ching-tung Ting that Sir George Scott suggests is to a point half-way between Tali Fu and Yün-nan Fu. By this he
